ChocolateHeaven

Eve retrospective: Jovian go boom (part 1)

In May of YC106 (2004), Misu Baniya – a Jovian diplomat – was on a tour; an anniversary visit celebrating the introduction of pod-and-clone technology to empires other than the Jove. He attempted to meet with the heads of state for all four empires within a day.

Speculation was rife as to how he would achieve this in a single day, with the rumour mill assuming some kind of advanced ‘jump drive’ device (when at the time there were no jump drive in Eve at all).

Jovian go boom!

When it came to the day in question, something went horribly wrong (as it so often does!) and Baniya got exploded into hundreds of thousands of pieces across the galaxy. Conveniently (?) these parts ended up ‘transported’ into pop pilots’ hangers, one per person.

There were five different parts – Bone Splinter, Blood Drop, Epidermis Sliver, Liver Bile, and Cerebral Slice. Additionally there were Complex Fullerenes, which were part of Baniya’s ship. These things (body parts inclusive) can still be found on contract for sometimes-extortionate prices, but to this day nobody knows what purpose the fullerene shards hold, if any. All of the parts were randomly spread across the galaxy, as one would expect.

Black-market trading of these parts began in earnest using the escrow system (a precursor to the contracts system we all use today), with many capsuleers assuming the body parts to be of some use in the future. The fullerenes in particular were of interest, due to being ship technology.

The fullerene casing of his vessel proved problematic in the cloning process, and the ambassador’s clone died shortly after being activated.

An alternative plan to ‘resurrect’ Baniya was drawn up by the Jovian Directorate, who made contact with the heads of state of the empires, and tasked each to gather the body parts. The idea being that with enough collected, the Jovians – with their vastly superior technology – would re-assemble Baniya from the collected parts. Kinda gross.

Each race had to collect a different piece, and hand them in in bulk lots of set amounts based on how common they were. The trouble was, each part had been ‘exploded’ across all the empires, so trading of tiny pieces of the diplomat was inevitable, and representatives of the capsuleer community from each race slowly began to form up and help coordinate.

The collection efforts, results and subsequent rewards will be covered in part 2.

(Probably) Related Posts

Eve retrospective: Jovian go boom (part 2)The collection efforts and results of the Misu Baniya body part collection. This follows on from part one of the post, which can be found here: http://www.minmatart.com/2010/jovian-go-boom-1/

Lists!Curiously, I’ve been added to a list of folks for their microblogs. I guess that’s taken over for me instead of big blogs like this, though hopefully when I have something interesting to write I’ll have more posts.